4 - Other Ways of Saving Effort

Summary

This chapter discusses types of efficiency beyond coding length asymmetries and word order. Language users have a preference for forms and meanings with higher accessibility, which can be understood broadly as ease of retrieval from long-term memory, transparency, or absence of nearby competitors. The strategies discussed in this chapter include analytic support, avoidance of identity and efficient introduction of new referents into discourse. Higher accessibility facilitates processing. This type of efficiency is the least explored one, and requires more research. In particular, we need to understand which aspects of accessibility facilitate processing, and how their preferences interact with other strategies, such as using longer forms for less accessible meanings.